The game is provisionally titled Arturem Online and it’s going to be an online multiplayer 3D graphical virtual world. I’m deliberately not calling it an MMO because the concept is more multiplayer than massively multiplayer. What I want to do is focus on some of the more niche gameplay areas like role-playing, politics and PvP that while common in MUDs are currently not so well represented in graphical MMOs.

I think this type of gameplay will work better with server populations scaled in the hundreds rather than the thousands so I’m deliberately aiming for a small scale world. Besides, a traditional MMO with heavy PvE based gameplay and a massive world is just not feasible for a small team, nevermind a solo developer, so I’m not even going to attempt to go there.

I’m producing the game under the umbrella of Bantam Cricket Games as I think it looks a bit more professional and makes it easier to bring in other people further down the line if necessary. For now though it’s mostly just me with a couple of friends I’ve roped in to help out with a few things. Yes the name is a bit odd, but trivia fans should note it’s what the “bc” in bc-dev has always stood for.

I’m using BigWorld MMO middleware which should take care of a lot of the backend requirements for the game. It was a toss up between BW and Hero Engine, and while a lot of people seem to be moving over to Hero for me BW was the best option (a topic for another post maybe!)

It’s very early days still but I’ve got my BW server and development environment all set up and have worked through some of the tutorial documentation. BigWorld ships with a fantasy demo that includes some basic functionality, but there’s still a lot of work to do to make any kind of game. The system is a little daunting at first but when you consider what it’s actually doing behind the scenes it’s amazing how (relatively!) simple it is.

Development is on hold for the time being after I ran into some problems with the BigWorld middleware I was using. The tech itself is great, but there seemed to be a lack of interest from the developers in the indie product in terms of updates, support and a clear upgrade path.

The BigWorld folks were professional and courteous when I dealt with them over a license fee refund so have no complaints there, but it was clear that being a small company they have to focus on their big commercial clients.

Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find a suitable alternative so for now the project is on hold.

I had another project concept that I’d been working on which wouldn’t require such heavy lifting on the backend (only limited 3D) so I may switch to that for a while.